The Speaking section of the IELTS Academic is without doubt considered to be quite a complicated part of the test. Candidates never know for sure what questions the examiner will ask them. However, if you clearly understand the format and how your response is evaluated, and if you know some useful tips and strategies, you can reduce the stress and perform excellently.
Today, we are offering you a word of advice on how to prepare for the Speaking section of the IELTS Academic.
- Make sure you understand the format of the Speaking test.
For example, in Part 1, the examiner will ask you some simple personal questions on everyday familiar topics such as work, study, where you live, food, holidays, friends, going out, festivals, sports, schools and public transport. The examiner usually reads these questions from the script.
In Part 2, the examiner will give you a topic on a card, and you will have to speak about it for about 2 minutes. You will have 1 minute to prepare. You can take some notes. Usually such tasks ask the candidate to talk about personal experiences such as a significant person in your life or a memorable event. After you finish speaking, the examiner can ask you one or two follow-up questions.
Part 3 of the Speaking test is called a discussion. It is related to the topic from Part 2. However, the examiner will ask you more complicated questions. You will have to justify various opinions and views, evaluate, make predictions and talk about your preferences connected to the issue.
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- Find a study partner.
It is a good idea to have someone you can practice the speaking part of the exam with because you can get the feedback. You also practice giving feedback and have a better understanding of what is required in the test.
- Record your answers and evaluate them with the checklist.
Even if you already have a study partner, try recording you answers and analyze them. For example:
— Did I paraphrase the question?
— Did I use the variety of lexis and grammar?
— Did I repeat myself?
By recording yourself, you receive an important tool of self-awareness – understanding your own strengths and weaknesses that stimulates further learning.
READ ABOUT: How to avoid repetition at the IELTS Speaking test
Recently we have launched the Speaking unit of our IELTS Academic self-study course where you can practice answering all types of questions, get feedback on your responses, and listen to sample responses accompanied by the teacher’s comment. Finally, you will go through a full imitation of the Speaking test and, once again, get detailed feedback and see sample responses.
- Do timed practice.
As you know, in IELTS Speaking Part 2, you are supposed to speak for 2 minutes. While preparing for the exam, use a timer. By doing so, you will understand how much you have to say and develop the feeling of time, i.e. how long these two minutes are. On the day of the exam, the examiner will stop you when the time is over.
- Learn how to take notes.
In the second task, you can take notes, so learn how to do this effectively:
— don’t write in full sentences;
— form the main ideas for all prompts;
— think about approximately three details for each prompt that you would like to mention;
— develop your own system of shortening symbols, abbreviations etc.;
— write down your ideas.
- Learn and use pointing phrases.
These phrases will provide a structure to your response and help you organize it. By doing so, you will shape your answer, and the examiner will follow your thoughts without any effort. For example: I am going to talk about…, The reason why this person is so significant is …, Moving on to the question… etc.
- Make sure you cover all the prompts.
You can do this with a study partner or by recording your own answers. In such way you can evaluate whether you covered all the points that you were asked to, whether you covered them well enough or not. Sometimes candidates concentrate only on two cues and do not cover the rest at all. Be careful with this too.
READ ABOUT: How not to pass IELTS Speaking: common mistakes made by candidates
- Learn the words/phrases you lack and make them active part of your vocabulary.
It is important to notice the words you require to complete the task. For example, if you need to describe a place, think about the words and phrases you want to tell about it. If you do not know how to say this in English, look up in a dictionary, learn, and use in sentences. It will be good to prepare a few phrases for each topic, but do not just learn them to impress the examiner.
- Practice discussing more complicated abstract issues.
This is an important part of your preparation. There are some typical questions you will have to answer in Part 3. They are:
— questions about your opinion, e.g. What do you think…?
— evaluation questions, e.g. What do you think about this or that opinion?
— making predictions, e.g. What do you think will happen…. in the future?
— questions about cause and effect, e.g. What caused ‘this’ and/or what effects has ‘it’ had?
— questions about unreal or imaginary situations where you have to make a hypothesis, e.g. Imagine you…., What would you do …?
— comparing and contrasting, e.g. What are the differences / similarities between …?
— questions about the past and present, e.g. How were things different in the past and how have they changed?
- Practice using idiomatic vocabulary, more complex grammar and linkers.
When recording yourself think if you use those and think what you could have used instead. This will help the examiner to assess you based on your fluency. For those who speak English as a native tongue, linking words or idioms come without any effort. However, if you are a non-native speaker, you have to learn them and practice using.
- Learn the language to evaluate, state opinions, hypothesize, compare and contrast.
You will need this vocabulary in Part 3 of your Speaking test. It is advisable to brush up this functional language.
On our platform, you have a possibility to do tasks related to these aspects, record yourself and check your speaking performance via self-assessment checklist. This helps you better understand where you are now in terms of your speaking performance. We have also designed speaking practice tests that are to be recorded by users and then listened to by IELTS professionals who will check them and provide feedback with the aim of giving a clear picture of what is done effectively and what still should be improved. On top of that, we offer tasks that focus on improving your own language and learning chunks that will help not only win some time on the day of the exam, but shape the response and make it more automatic.
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